


Of the Reverend Mr Giles and His Wife: The Pixie Problem

by ljs



Series: Of the Reverend Mr Giles and His Wife [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, regency au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-15
Updated: 2011-04-15
Packaged: 2017-10-18 02:57:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Imagine early 19th-century England, and Rupert Giles as a vicar with a secret Past; imagine his eccentric lady wife Anya. Imagine some pixies. And here we go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of the Reverend Mr Giles and His Wife: The Pixie Problem

On a golden late autumn afternoon, in a well-tended and tidy corner of England – let us stipulate that it was a corner in the west country, for the sake of accurate history --the Reverend Mr Rupert Giles was riding home to the Vicarage, humming to himself.

Mr Giles, a tall, handsome, and solid man of middle years, had enjoyed a good day thus far: a lovely breakfast with his beloved wife, who'd baked him his favourite treat (with cinnamon and extra currants) for no other reason than it was Wednesday; a morning session of sermon-writing, wherein he had finished a page of learned discourse on Proverbs; a successful afternoon session with the two young neighbouring ladies he tutored.

(The Summers girls, daughters of the often absent Captain Henry and the often distracted Joyce Summers, required quite different kinds of attention. Miss Summers refused conventional forms of learning, and so Mr Giles taught her sword-fighting and various forms of combat; her first season in society having led to a complicated and ongoing series of attachments, including an Irish wastrel named Liam and said wastrel's English relation of undetermined closeness, one William the truly horrific poet, Miss Summers had said that these skills were more useful than stupid books. He and Miss Summers did not reveal this education to Mrs Joyce Summers, however. Miss Dawn Summers bid fair to be a blue-stocking, on the other hand, and would have been despaired of as a spinster, were it not for her sparkling eyes, her lovely manner -- and her regrettable tendencies toward light thievery. Mr Giles would never admit that he had taught Miss Dawn any tricks of lock-picking, but...

Mr Giles had a Past, let us say. And a Secret in his present day.)

In any event, there had been the clash of swords, the music of Latin recitation, and a spot of safe-cracking, and Mr Giles felt the warmth of a day well-spent. So it was that he rode home, humming “On Greenland's Coast” rather than a hymn which might be considered more appropriate for a man of his vocation, and wondering if his darling Anya had done any more baking for his tea.

When he crested the hill toward his home, he saw the rose garden his Anya so adeptly tended, with its wild-rose border. (Every morning in their season, Mr Giles walked to the wild roses and gathered one to decorate the desk in his study; it was a sentimental act to choose such a flower, because with it he was ever reminded of his wife's bloom, her rich colours, and her extremely sharp thorns. He did not explain this fancy to his wife, because at times the strength of his passion for her made him abashed, and in any event he was not given to explaining his deepest feelings, even to her.)

There were no roses now, of course, and he saw on the other side of the garden his wife, marching purposefully toward the stable. “My dear!” he called. “What is it?”

Mrs Giles spun around to greet him. Her usual smile, bright enough to warm the most dismal winter day, was dimmed. “Two pixies. Destroying the stable. Andrew saw them.”

Mr Giles dismounted, which gave him time to mentally heap opprobrium on the hapless servant Andrew's head, and then proceeded toward his wife. “Er, Cornish or Devon?”

“What does that matter?” she said briskly. “We need our stable back, not to mention that either one might steal any passing child's soul. Also, David returns from Harrow soon.”

(Their son David, a sweet-tempered but frighteningly self-possessed and overly intelligent boy of ten, was well able to battle any number of threats on his own, what with his natural gifts inherited from both parents, but one must make allowances for a mother's worry.)

Mrs Giles did not appear very much like a mother at the moment, it should be said. She was blessed with a pretty, albeit somewhat sharp-featured, countenance which made her appear younger than her years, and her habit of putting herbal rinses through her hair made it shine with a different colour almost every day. She was an eccentric, often literal lady, given to sudden whims and oddities due only in part to her own Past, but underneath her fluttering rose-printed gown beat a warm heart entirely given over to her husband and son (and parish duties, horticulture, and trade in the plants she grew).

Mr Giles was devoted, body and soul, to his Anya, but nevertheless he could not let her error pass: “My darling,” he said, “I believe I have told you several times that only the Cornish pixies are to be so feared--”

“Dearest Rupert,” she said, “if you are going to prose on in your usual overly expositional manner, we will be overrun with pixies before you reach the first of your periods. Do you come along and deal with the problem without talking it to death.”

Mr Giles would have been moved to expostulate, and in language better served for a sea-faring man than a vicar – his language being rather salty in unguarded moments, due to his Past – but she caught his free hand and interlaced their fingers, and the attention soothed him. The warmth of her body as she pressed against him in passing, the scent of her hair: these too were welcome distractions, although they did summon up the passion which always slumbered within...

He sighed, and allowed his wife to lead him toward the stable, and murmured, “'It is better to marry than burn.'” He took pains to keep the murmur indistinguishable from his wife, however, as she had often announced that she had no great opinion of St Paul whom she believed to be completely ignorant of female minds and hearts, and they had no time for the inevitable argument which would arise from her hearing him.

It was time for Practical Magic.

This was Mr Giles' great Secret -- one incompatible with his vocation as clergyman of the Church of England, but there it was. As a youth he had begun to dabble in arcana and the occult, and despite a horrible tragedy which led to his giving up the practice, he had opened a door which he could not entirely shut. He occasionally did magic in service for his country, but as we said when beginning this brief tale, his corner of England, which included the village of Sunnydale, was very well-tended in all sorts of ways. Here he concentrated his energies.

Pixies should not have been a problem for such a man, but --

“Dear Lord!” he said upon taking his first look into the stable. Had he been wearing his spectacles, he would have polished them, his habit in agitation or annoyance.

Two pixies, a vibrant green in complexion, about the size of proper red squirrels, with teeth much larger than their size warranted, were flying around the interior of the stable, strewing hay about and singing vile pixie songs in a slightly drunken manner. Mrs Giles' pony Hoff gazed with some dismay at the creatures, perhaps because they had chewed on the seat of the pony-cart which Mrs Giles drove about the neighbourhood. Mr Giles' horse Citroen (so named for the lemon sheen to his cream-coloured coat) looked over Mr Giles' shoulder, neighed in alarm, and took several steps back.

“Exactly,” Mrs Giles said. “Whatever is the matter with them?”

The pixies reared back and chattered offensive pixie-remarks in a reply that Mr Giles was very glad indeed he could not translate.

“It matters not,” he said in a lowered voice, “What matters is that we exile these creatures. Do you have the proper materials at hand, my dearest?”

Beaming, she offered the basket which she had been carrying and flipped back the tea-towel which covered its contents. Inside gleamed a golden coin, a small loaf of bread, and a dagger. (Mrs Giles was not the magical equal of her husband, but her Past had given her a surprising breadth of knowledge.)

Mr Giles smiled in reply – he as ever admired his wife's forethought – and took the dagger before turning to the pixies, who were currently entwined mid-air describing a posture more suited to a pornographic poem by Aretine. He spoke a word learnt in a faerie-book, a word which fell like music.

The pixies flew apart and hovered, listening. Their beady green eyes were trained on the blade as well.

Mrs Giles showed the creatures the coin and the bread, at which they chattered pixie-remarks which seemed slightly less hostile. Mr Giles bowed, then spoke in halting Faerie the ritual request for their immediate and final departure, with the coin and the bread their toll.

The pixies appeared to twinkle, as if considering the offer --

And then flew at Mr and Mrs Giles with teeth and claws extended. Through the stable whistled a cold wind from a distant sea, strong enough to whisk away any child's soul.

Mr Giles, being a practical magician and an intelligent man besides, was not surprised by the attack. His dagger flew, fast as the pixies, and made a circle in the air. His words poured out, even faster, and made the circle a pixie-cage.

The creatures were fairly caught.

Mrs Giles said to them, “You were offered fair exchange, and you declined. The price is now fallen.” With these words she broke off half the bread and put it in her pocket; then she drew out a smaller gold coin and took back the larger.

The pixies, understanding now that they had come to the wrong place entirely, withdrew teeth and claws, and bowed their heads.

Mr Giles offered again the ritual request for immediate and final departure; the pixies assented; the cage was withdrawn. In a twinkle the bread, (smaller) coin, and pixies were gone, leaving only the lingering tang of a cold wind from a distant sea.

“Oh, well done, my dear!” Mrs Giles cried, and after bestowing a butterfly-kiss on his cheek, she at once began to tidy the disaster.

Mr Giles took the moment to work with Citroen, unsaddling, rubbing down, and offering fresh hay. It was warm work, even in this late autumn, and he shed cravat and coat in order to move more swiftly.

So it was that, once finished, he looked up to find his wife in the pony-cart, murmuring over the torn leather seat. She had bent over, and the fabric of her dress molded a part of her body to which Mr Giles had a profound sensual attachment.

Two steps, and he was to her, his hands spanning her waist and then slipping down, fore and aft. “Dearest Anya,” he said huskily.

She leaned back into his touch – his improper enjoyment of marital adventure more than shared by her – but said, “Darling Rupert, I believe that Sir Quentin Travers had mentioned stopping by for tea today. Something about last week's sermon, perhaps that bit where you accidentally began to read the notes on the German vampyre which had got mixed up with your--”

“Oh, damn him,” was Mr Giles' unchristian but heartfelt interruption, and he turned her around, pulled her close, and then buried his face in her bosom.

Mrs Giles was not proof against this expression of spousal affection. Her hands threaded through his grey hair, pressing him to her, and she said, “My dearest honey. Perhaps, if you rush--”

She found herself on her back on the seat before she could finish her thought, but she could not find it in herself to remonstrate, so busy as she was, kissing him and pulling his shirt out of his breeches.

The rest of the tale must not be told in polite company. Let us just say that the golden late autumn sunlight poured through the open stable door, there in that well-tended and tidy corner of England, and that the warriors against the pixies enjoyed their just rewards.


End file.
